Alibaba debuts multimodal AI tool to challenge OpenAI and DeepSeek

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. introduced QwenVLo, its newest multimodal AI model, as the Chinese tech giant continues to bolster its footing in the growingly competitive global AI battle. 

The model allows users to create and edit images with text prompts and visual inputs, capabilities meant to be on par, or even compete with leading AI developers like OpenAI and DeepSeek.

QwenVLo is an improvement on Alibaba’s previous Qwen2. 5-VL baseline model and extends it to support new tasks such as text-to-image and image-to-image generation.

One standout feature is that of progressive generation, which means that users can see an image as it’s being built — a level of transparency and interactivity rare in most AI tools today.

“This newly upgraded model not only ‘understands’ the world but also generates high-quality recreations based on that understanding,” the company said in a blog post.

Alibaba sharpens AI strategy with Qwen series

The push into AI is no longer a glam-up girl for Alibaba’s e-commerce dominance. The company has been aggressively working its way into AI since early 2024.

In February, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said that the e-commerce and IT behemoth would prioritize its work on artificial general intelligence (AGI). He stressed that developing AGI had now become Alibaba’s top priority, highlighting the rising significance of AI to the company’s growth and competitive edge in the future.

Alibaba has already launched a range of models under the Qwen brand, each tailored to a specific modality — text, image, video, and audio. QwenVLo replaces that mix of things and is built to perform on lower-end machines, including mobiles and personal laptops; however, unlike most state-of-the-art AI models, which still need loads of cloud computing power to run efficiently.

In March 2025, Quark released a new Quark app, which included the new Qwen functionality. Now, the app operates as an AI-powered smart assistant with search, summarization, and creative tools. It demonstrates Alibaba’s desire to build AI models and weave them into consumer-facing experiences.

Alibaba challenges DeepSeek and OpenAI in AI race

The release of QwenVLo by Alibaba coincides with a wave of AI-related initiatives worldwide. US-founded OpenAI has released GPT-4o, its most advanced multimodal model yet, which can understand and respond with text, images, and audio. 

Over in China, all eyes were on DeepSeek, a homegrown startup for whom cost efficiency is fast becoming a make-or-break challenge in AI development, as it claimed to have created a large competitive language model for just a few million dollars.

Tech titans all over China have since rushed out similar AI services that are faster, cheaper, and more versatile. One of its first serious entries is Alibaba’s Qwen Vlo, which has the potential to take on both its Western and Chinese competitors by delivering high-quality and low-weight multimodal functionality.

The race is now more about who can build the smartest model, but who can make that intelligence usable at scale.

Alibaba is betting that the types of people who use an app every day- students, designers, business owners, and developers- will flock to tools that are quick, simple to use, and optimized for various devices.

However, whether Qwen VLo is something marquee names dominate the users in the market is yet to be seen. But Alibaba has hammered the message: China is not just keeping pace with the world in the race for AI supremacy — it is determined to lead it.

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